Daredevil aka Matt Murdock is a lawyer by day and masked vigilante by night. He fights crime because of a deep, almost compulsive sense of justice. It’s a genuine desire to help the innocent people living in Hell’s Kitchen who were failed by the legal system. The world Matt lives in is dark and violent. Daredevil’s grounded, somewhat realistic setting within the Marvel Universe is one of the many things fans love about the series.
And then there’s Mike Murdock.
Before Daredevil became famous for its gritty tone, it wasn’t afraid to embrace its inner soap opera. The Mike Murdock arc is one of the strangest stories featured in a Daredevil comic. It started as a simple lie and kept growing until it became downright absurd.
It Started With a Letter
Secret identities only work if the people around you are unobservant. They don’t look too closely into the mysterious injuries, the sudden cancellations and disappearances.
Spider-Man (Peter Parker) figured it out because he also juggles his personal life with his crimefighting. He noticed the patterns and connected them to Daredevil. Once he figured it out, Spidey wrote Matt a letter saying he knew and would keep the secret.
Except Karen Page opened the letter first and read it to Foggy Nelson. They’re both confused because Matt is completely blind. Neither Karen nor Foggy know about Matt’s radar sense or enhanced physiology that helps him make up for his lack of sight.
In Daredevil vol. 1 #25 (December 1966), when Foggy and Karen confront him about Spider-Man’s letter, Matt tells them he isn’t Daredevil. His brother is. You know, the one he never mentioned until this very moment. His twin, Mike Murdock, has been the one under the mask this whole time. Matt never told them because Mike didn’t want anyone to know.
This is all a bold-faced lie, of course. And this wouldn’t be something that’s forgotten in the next issue either. Matt’s refusal to confide in Karen and Foggy snowballs into one of the strangest sub-plots in the Daredevil comics.
One Man, Three Identities
To make the lie believable, Matt could not just mention Mike. He became Mike by impersonating him on a regular basis.
To differentiate Mike from Matt, he wore loud clothing and changed his personality. When pretending to be Mike he’s bolder, and more playful than Matt ever allowed himself to be. And he still had to balance being Daredevil, and being Matt Murdock. In Daredevil vol. 1 #30 (July 1967), Matt impersonated Mike dressed up as Thor, and got his ass handed to him by the actual Thor. It’s insane how long this bit went on.
The craziest part is it worked for a while. Foggy and Karen had already seen enough strange behaviour for the twin explanation to be believable. The lie was so audacious that it overridden their doubt.
But the cracks were always there, and the story kept getting stranger. For example, Mike was blind too. Because of course he was. Karen found herself falling for Mike despite having feelings for Matt. In fact, Matt would flirt with Karen as Mike because he couldn’t bring himself to approach her because of his double life.
At some point, you stopped wondering “will Karen and Foggy find out Mike isn’t real?” and started asking yourself “how long can this possibly go on?”
The “Death” of Mike Murdock
Eventually, Matt needed a way out. He created one in Daredevil vol. 1 #41 (June 1968), and he did it in the most dramatic fashion possible: he faked Mike’s death.
Daredevil took a brutal, public beating that seemed to put an end to the masked crimefighter. Then Matt told Foggy and Karen that Daredevil/Mike had died in the fight.
But Matt couldn’t convincingly fake his grief. In the next issue, Foggy even called him out for not being upset about his “brother’s” death. It’s unintentionally funny, but it also reveals that Matt had been Mike for so long that he didn’t feel any real emotions for the persona. Losing that lie was a relief instead of a tragedy.
But he was not done yet. To keep Daredevil active without “Mike” around, Matt claimed that Mike had trained a replacement before he died. The hero would live on and the whole thing was over. Except it wasn’t.
The Lie Became a Person
Years later, during Charles Soule’s run, an Inhuman called the Reader came across Matt’s notes about the fake twin. The Reader can make written information real, which caused Mike Murdock to become a real person.
During the events of Devil’s Reign, Mike obtained a Norn Stone, an Asgardian artifact that can alter reality. He used it to change the timeline so that he had always been Matt’s twin brother. In this new version, he grew up with Matt, knew their father, and even played a role in the accident that gave Matt his powers.
Mike’s life didn’t last long. During a trial, Kingpin mistook him for Matt and killed him in a case of mistaken identity.
What started as a light, silly plot from the Silver Age turns into something tragic. A character who started as a joke ends up becoming a real person, only to die because he was mistaken for his twin brother.
What the Mike Murdock Arc Says About Daredevil
Daredevil has always been seen as being more grounded compared to other Marvel heroes. The Mike Murdock arc proves that even Daredevil can’t escape the more ridiculous aspects of superhero stories.
One lie spiraled into soap-opera level chaos. And yet, the willingness to deceive even the ones who’s closest to him and faking the existence of a long lost twin doesn’t seem out of place for Matt Murdock.
The line between being realistic and absurd is always thinner than it looks.
